Maia Kapur AP Rhetoric 09 10

When discussing the nature of American dispute, Boorstin is right in implicating the unwavering dissenter as the obstacle to progress and democracy itself. However, he should recognize that in the real course of things, disagreements on social subjects can equally result in social change, and often equally on the heels of violence. In effect, it appears that neither technique is more effective, though the disagreer is typically more reasonable in their demands.

In this nation’s political history, we witness how the dissent of the southern states led to the creation of the Confederacy and an great destructive war, all due to a rift in ideology between the two reigons whose economies were so different.  

Their secession, which was considered by loyalists to be utterly unpatriotic, became an unshakeable force that rapidly took a swath of the southern US from the Union. They were dissenters by definition; they were in disagreement as per the value of forced servitude and chose to demonstrate this by completely disenfranchising themselves from the other point of view. They did not engage in discussion; they abandoned the podium. And this is the distinctive difference between a dissenter who disbands and a disagreer who protests. However, in the aftermath of said bloody war, the 13th amendment was penned, the confederacy disbanded, and the frontier pushed westward. The south came out unsuccesful here, and many fewer in number.

FDR once said, years before Vietnam War Protests violently surged college campuses and urban areas, “To love your country is to improve it”. He was speaking of those who choose to disagree with a policy and talk about it, even if you talk loudly, or while holding pickets and marching. During the civil rights movement, thousands of blacks and whites convened in Birmingham to march peacefully against school segregation. They were in disagreement, and they acted to catalyze a discussion, both parties “count[ing] themselves in a majority”. The protest became violent, but the media coverage called politicians and other social groups to focus on the issue, and schools were desegregated soon after. Again, it is important to recognize here how both the Civil War and Civil Rights movement were characterized by violence–”a quarell”, as Boorstin might say–but the first was the product of an uncomprimising, “cancerous” dissenting party that truly spread its stubborn unrest malignantly through the rural south. The second was a case, much like that of Apartheid in South Africa, where the leaders declared “this [to be] a cause for which I’m prepared to die”. They entered the streets of Birmingham with their disagreements on posters in their hand, inviting a discussion. They recieved bullets instead, though the discussion came later.

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre;

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

In choosing to pair these two quotes (by different speakers), I wanted to illuminate the common opinion that entertainment and education are often intertwined, and how typically proponents of hands-on, progressive education insist that some form of engaging display greatly enhances a learning environment. Firstly, it’s important to distinguish between the first quote’s “theatre” and Walt Disney’s “entertainment.” By definition, theatre is typically an art form in which realistic or dramatized situations are performed for an audience. Most people attend a theatre for pleasure, and though a play can be far less than pleasurable (such as Macbeth), it is still considered “entertaining”, as it rouses our minds to question, acknowledge, or relate to similar elements in our own life. In other words, theatre can have positive or negative content (violence versus love, comedy) or be mixed (as most is), but is always “entertaining”. Now, in education, we are most readily taught by experience. In the line of experience, entertainment is the next best thing. Viewing or hearing a person dramatically relate their experience or situation leads a student to apply it to themselves.

As educators, our role is to relate complex information. To recognize that this transmission is occuring between humans, who share a conciousness in which they experience life, take interest in things, and react to their own environment, is to recognize the value of entertaining them. This may not necessarily mean by performance, but it means by bringing an element of personality, even if it is a negative one, into the lesson.

In America today, when given a “choice” reading assignment, a student is offered to decide between one intimidating work (Shakespeare’s Macbeth) and another, inaccessibly verbose piece such as Scarlett Letter. Across town, the inter-urban public school is analyzing racicst overtures in Huck Finn, while the class is comprised almost entirely of black students.

It becomes clear that the absence of an un-standardized curriculum that is nevertheless dominated by older, western/white masculine works will alienate entire swaths of the schooled youth. The American literary “canon” should come to more closely represent the varieties of race, demographics, and cultures that characterize our nation.

The editor of Sulfur magazine (SOURCE C) expresses the pitfalls of teacher’s reliance on anthologies, citing that a certain homoerotic Whitman piece was so parced down in the text that his discussion came to center why that “editor might have chosen [such] a small selection”. Eshleman is accurate in identifying that there is something unsettling about the absence of parts of literature in our education, but I would continue to say that beyond pieces of poems and essays gone missing, the most common American texts are absent of cultural variety. When these books appear, much in the way that Whitman’s poem did, they are few and far between, and often take a lot of effort on the teacher’s part to include them in the curriculum. The conversation almost inevitably becomes, “why haven’t we read this before?”

Consulting SOURCE B, a quick scan of the titles reveals that but one contender, lower on the list, was written by a woman, and even she disguised herself using a male pseudonym at the time of publication. This book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is a typical freshman-year work that English classes analyze for its representation of racial and social justice in the post-civil war South. In it, the main black character, though he garners the sympathy of those around him (whites of a higher class—namely Atticus Finch, a lawyer), is generally read to be a slow-spoken, physically disabled victim of his surroundings. If those who arrange the “canon” seem to think that this meager representation of blacks in America suffices for a rich social education, they are entirely wrong. This image of a black man is not only outdated in time, it is shamefully unbalanced by  Shakespeare’s Caesar, where this time, though a white ruler is ultimately killed by his friends, he is glorified as a powerful and strong-headed soldier through the end. There is a discrepancy here.

The publishers who designed the cover (source D) of “World Masterpices”, a text that I became familiar with as well, intended to communicate the breadth of their sourcing in featuring a classic Japanese silkscreen. If I do remember correctly, the edition I read included footnotes on nearly every page, which would elaborate on a given word or reference from an “exotic” piece to make it more accessible to American 10^th graders. For example, the word Samurai had a little asterix beside it and was denoted as a “honored warrior, often dwelling in the imperial palace”. And yet, as we read through the pieces, it became clear that most of the culturally significant works were from another time as well. We had tried to exchange more contemporary white pieces (Great Gatsby, Mice and men) for archaic scrolls detailing tea ceremonies in the Shin Dynasty. The publishers of this “canon” have it right in intention yet wrong in style. The true “world masterpieces” that Americans need to experience, to affirm “a child’s feeling of self-worth” (SOURCE E)  are varied in culture and in modernity, are whole in their content and unedited by bias, and are presented clearly and completely in a standardized fashion in high schools across the nation.

Shirky seems to be creating a mega-thesis commenting on 1. the environment 2. the media and work environment 3. complex societies and why they collapse and 4. how it is imperative YET impossible to downsize therefore 5. the end is imminent?

His presented logos is excellent. He first establishes some street cred by mentioning how he was a participant in an ATT conference–meaning that he knows something about technology and contemporary media–but moves on to cite several studies and real-life examples that illustrate and expand his point. His historical references place his argument on a grander scale, on the plane of the Roman’s fate. He states, quite logically, “Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond”, after describing how the complexity of ancient societies had become so entrenched that it would be impossible to disengage or reduce a single system. He then relates this to the present internet (also establishing his ethos as one aware of current and historical issues) and states the absurd theory that  “just need to get back into the habit of doing so [paying for content] online” and similar quote by the all-powerful Rupert Murdoch. His logic, in addition to his clear language, is so clear cut he leaves little room to argue. He cites events and ideas from a wide spectrum of experts and ultimately ties it into a frightening yet undeniable statement: that things at our level of complexity can and will collapse.

(Decent Exposure)

1. What is the speaker trying to convince us of? The speaker tries to provide a nuanced explanation for  the proliferation of nudity in public campaigns, and how or why the “shock factor” of nude practice has shrunk. She detaches herself a bit from the opinion by crediting Trilogy, but in her own words postulates that (the particular demonstration in question) is as effective because “Green casts nudity as neither uniformly erotic nor wholly innocent”. This, she says, is the ticket to a meaningful day of nudity.

Who is the audience? Despite the statement, she laments how the words of feminism have proven to “fail” women, implying that the reader is A familiar with the feminist movement, B supportive of the movement and C shamed to see it fail, especially at the hands of the “feminist vernacular”. This passage she describes how women “obsess about perfecting their bodies, some women have decided to use those same bodies as a site of protest.” Now she speaks to an audience that is separate from the contemporary feminists, excluding them as “some” women. 

How is pathos used in the piece? Interestingly, though women’s rights is typically an emotionally charged topic, the author takes a somewhat artistic perspective on it, defining the characteristics of a “meaningful” nudist demonstration, without lauding or condemning the practice. In fact, the quote  ”…Such is the double-edged quality of nudity in Trilogy that it becomes both a renunciation of worldliness, but also a biting critique of it” is similar to the reviews you’d see on the side panel of a renaissance nude; it’s a commentary on society, not a dysfunction of it.

The speaker’s initial rhetorical technique is to establish a disliked yet forgivable persona. He does this by describing how, in his Bumese life, he was largely hated by the natives and they would “hoot” after him, while confessing how despite this he did in fact sympathize with their counter-colonization cause. This, combined with his informal language (using simple descriptions like “yellow”, “stinking”) prepares the audience to witness the dead man  and elephant with a similar sympathy. His description of going down to the beast creates a subtle similarity between the plight of the elephant and that of the indigenous people: “They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching.” Here, his approval from the crowd is dependent on his killing a great beast, just as his role as a policeman is to silence and control the natives. However, in both instances he feels reluctant to do so. Throughout the piece his personality remains consistent, and the audience feels endeared by his apparent respect for the life of a creature, despite his guilt (at killing the man). However, this becomes a contradiction when he suddenly does decide to kill it, and his speech becomes more rapid and peppered with still informal but crude description–”slobbering”, “sagging”. Readers take shock at his action, and recognize his greater point that man can be lured to do something he blatantly disagrees with for the sake of approval, though the results are often devastating. (This can also be related to the actions of the colonists).

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/earth_hour_2010.html

This image, that’s also appeared in Newsweek and other magazines, displays what reporters often call a “symbol of globalization”. In this pair, the towers are featured at such an angle of reference as to make them almost look abstract; the initial photo’s background is pitch black as the towers glow bright silver. This contrast in color is rarely seen in the natural world and makes them seem even more futuristic or unknown. Also, the way the frame and setup appears to bend the towers into oblivion gives the viewer the feeling of being overwhelmed or dominated by their sheer size, emphasizing the photographer’s point that these structures are huge, important, and like nothing else.

1. What is the object(s) of the attack? Twain is attacking “common sense” doctrines that American kids at the time were told were important as they grew up. 

2.  What is the satiric vehicle in which the attack is embodied (e.g., letter-narrativeor story or character or advertisement)? Advice like ‘don’t lie’ is delivered honestly, yet followed by a less noble explanation. When explaining certain moral responsibilites Twain often gives reasoning that is less “because it’s right” and more “because you might get caught”. To quote Richard Dawkins, it appears that having a moral conciese means being aware of the fact that someone may be watching. Anyways, this address to the youth tries to stab at what they’ve been grown up to think is right, admitting that while these values are just, you don’t necisarily have to have the purest heart.

3.  Is the type (or tone) of the satire Horatian (laughing at) or Juvenalian (biting)? Horatian – Twain is an accomplished writer and keeps his tone light (carelessness) as opposed to fierce (cavalier).

4.  What is the irony in the satire? As mentioned above, the irony is in how Twain supports details of the children’s upbringing, yet undermines them by saying things like “[obey your parents]…Or else they’ll make you.”

5.  Name one additional device used in the satire from among the following.

*absurdity–an idea taken to its logical extreme (e.g., a baby dies of  cleanliness).

*exaggeration–making things larger or smaller than they really are (e.g., caricature in political cartoons: hyperbole or exaggerated language in melodrama).

*understatement–saying less than is meant. Especially in the passage concerning firearms, a considerably dangerous tool strictly banned from child use. Yet he treats the issue as a matter of choice: “Never handle firearms carelessly”, then laments the loss of countless souls in a nursery-tale way.

*parody–any intentional mockery, like changing a well-known piece of literature.

*wit or word play–concentrated language (e.g., puns and limericks: What do you get when                   you cross a cow and a duck?  MILK AND QUACKERS).

*euphemism–a nice way to talk about unpleasant things, often by using particular words (e.g.,                   halitosis = bad breath;  end use allocation = rationing; slumber room = morgue).

Name of device or description of how device(s) is (are) used___see “understatement”______________________________

6.  What is the satiric norm–or standard of truth and goodness–by which the object of attack is criticized?  That is, what is the satirist’s true point or message? His true point is that alot of the stuff we learn is right is still right but most of us abide by it either to A. keep the peace or B. avoid punishment. He’s commenting on the lack of intrinsic motivation in kids.

7.  What is your reaction to the satirist’s treatment of the subject?  (Judge it.) I thought it was excellent. It’s funny, easy to understand, and doesn’t get too wrapped up in his political agenda or Scarlet Letter vocabulary.

…I’m not entirely sure how to respond to this piece, knowing fairly little about Satire and nothing about the Britain/Ireland situation at the time. It doesn’t even come across as particularly funny, though I suspect that his italicized  point–and satire in general–is meant to be slower and more stinging in effect. As opposed to Jon Stewart’s smarmy wisecracks (though he is considered satirical he definitely holds an opposite corner to Swift), this piece is like Hawthorne in its ornateness and intricacy of sentence structure. Perhaps he is trying to bewilder us with his Scheme, yet it is entirely lost on me.